Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday December 13, 2013 @12:45PM
from the nobody-wants-to-hear-your-conversation dept.

SonicSpike writes with news that two U.S. Senators, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), have proposed legislation to ban cell phone calls while aboard an airplane. This follows a recent announcement from the FAA increasing the range of electronic gadgets travelers can use while flying, and a vote by the FCC to consider allowing phone calls during flight. However, even as those government agencies work to lift regulations on in-flight technology, the Department of Transportation is pondering a in-flight call ban of its own, saying it might not be "fair" to consumers to have to listen to other passengers talk on the phone throughout a long flight. FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said, "If we move beyond what we do here today and actually update our rules to allow voice calls on planes we can see a future where our quiet time is monetized and seating in the silent section comes at a premium."

This person is why Cell Phones need to be banned on airplanes in this country. If I had to listen to her talk endlessly on a flight I'd probably look for the nearest emergency exit and throw her out! Yeah, there'd be collateral damage but honestly if a person can't be bothered to not use their phone in a theater what makes you think that they'll be polite on a plane?

It should be up to the airlines whether or not allowing voice calls would cater to their passengers, but airlines should have leeway on how they enforce their policy, such as being able to forcibly disembark a passenger immediately upon violating a voice-call prohibition.

If the country has to buy its own debt and pay interest to itself to avoid default, that is in many respects the same thing as printing money. Just wait until interest rates go up and people realize that we need to use most of our discretionary budget just to pay interest.

Which has already proven to be less harmful to the USA than when the DNC rammed Obamacare (is that "racist") through, without even reading it ("must vote for it, to see what is in it"). So far, Oregon spend 300 million to enroll 44 people, good FUCKING use of tax dollars.

You're kidding right? The amount of money we spent and the amount of interest we will pay to fund the two wars dwarfs any economic damage that Obamacare supposedly will cause. We won't know the final cost of the wars since we will be paying for the casualties that return home for quite a long time.

Which has already proven to be less harmful to the USA than when the DNC rammed Obamacare (is that "racist") through, without even reading it ("must vote for it, to see what is in it"). So far, Oregon spend 300 million to enroll 44 people, good FUCKING use of tax dollars.

And, just to remind you, Hillary, and Company supported the wars. And saying she didn't know GWB was lying, that is just remember, her Husband was President and knew all about Saddam and OBL, so she SHOULD have known. But then again "What difference does it make!!!!!"

Okay. Time for some fact checking. First, the full quote from Nancy Pelosi (not just the part that Michele Bachmann used and made famous) was:
”We’ll have to pass it so you can find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy.” Nancy Pelosi claims that she was saying that the American people wouldn’t see all the advantages of HCR until after it was passed, not that Congress had no idea what it said. I personally read it as her saying that during the debate in congress there were so many people saying false things about the healthcare law that not all of the benefits (or drawbacks) would be recognized by the public until they were enacted in law.

Second, Oregon has roughly 30,000 paper health care applications waiting for approval. Additionally at least 70,000 more people have signed up for Medicaid in response to informational letters the government sent out to eligible citizens. Given that the uninsured population of Oregon is roughly 500,000, I'd say those numbers are a pretty good indication that the program is both wanted and needed.The fact that the website is broken is a travesty, particularly given the amount of money (more like $150 million, according to the paper) paid to Oracle to get it to work.

However, the fact that a private contractor failed to construct a website does not mean the law is bad. It means we need better private contractors. Hopefully Oregon will figure out how to deal with Oracle and either get their money back, a working website, or both (the same could be said for the federal health exchange website).

Finally, as to your last point. You're saying that former President Bill Clinton was up to date on the most recently collected highly classified intelligence about Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and WMDs. And that he told his wife all about it. You do remember that the war in afghanistan started a year after he left office, and the war in Iraq started two years after he left office? Things can change a lot in a year, especially when an event like 9/11 shifts the focus of the intelligence community. I think you're overestimating the power and knowledge of former presidents.

Are you KIDDING me? Better to spend $300M to get 44 people health care (and that's a moronic statistic, anyway - they spent too much money and the site isn't ready, but that's an NRE cost, not a per-person rate, DUH) than $5 TRILLION to get thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. For the cost of those wars the US could have fully insured every citizen in the US for years.

And name ANY direct harm that has actually come to anyone AS OF TODAY over the ACA (not some unproven conspiracy theory of future issues). Yes, millions of cancellations of policies have been announced (*not* enacted yet), but the vast majority of those people will end up with with cheaper policies with more coverage. Combine that with newly covered people and it will be a large net gain. Not comforting to those individuals who made out the worse for it, of course, but on the scale of 300M people that's how things go.

...but the vast majority of those people will end up with with cheaper policies with more coverage.

Unfortunately, so far...we're seeing pretty much the oppositeof this.

People that had perfectly good coverage, are seeing those policies being replace by the new ones, that often offer less choice, fewer doctors, but coming also with higher deductibles and more expensive monthly payments.

Sure, we might get a few million new people on with insurance (if ACA actually starts to work as planned)...but at the co

Please cite examples that aren't Fox News on this? And I'm sure we can trade plenty of "anecdotes" either way - for example, a friend of mine just used the Texas exchange and her premium went down from over $1000 a month to about $300. But that's mostly irrelevant, since anecdotes aren't statistics, and the point is to increase the overall coverage and decrease the overall cost. And ANY conclusion about that right now (when it's only in the 2nd month of enrollment and NO old policies have actually even e

Yes, yes... because the Republican solution to the country's healthcare issues (and/or anything else having to with people who are not rich and/or white and/or corporations) was/is *so* much better. Remind me what that was/is again, other than "let them eat cake"?

It should be up to the airlines whether or not allowing voice calls would cater to their passengers, but airlines should have leeway on how they enforce their policy, such as being able to forcibly disembark a passenger immediately upon violating a voice-call prohibition.

How dare you let businesses determine their own methods of business. You NEED the government to tell you how to run your business since you suck at running it and some lifetime politician knows more about your business then you do.

You really don't want to go there. These are some of the most heavily regulated businesses on the planet. The companies in question might not even mind given the kind of chaos that could ensue otherwise.

Really? Have you *seen* the proliferation of charges the airlines invented, to boost the bottom line? They must employ the equivalent of Einsteins and Shakespeares of customer ripoff to come up with those.

...even if "being told what to do" means they decide internally but have a Federal organization slap their letterhead on it and make it a Federal rule/policy.

There will probably be a lot of high-mileage and influential business customers who want to talk on the phone. These people are the gravy for airlines in terms of income and that can get expensive if they switch to another carrier who will allow these calls. Making their own policies that risks exposing them to a competitive disadvantage is something they don't want.

If they do allow calls with their own policy, they then risk the public relations nightmare of bad press and public opinion. Of course they don't really care about vacation travelers opinions very much since they aren't the high margin business customers, but they also don't want the negative PR generally.

It's just so much easier for them on this issue if they don't have to decide on their own and they can just point to a regulatory rule.

...such as being able to forcibly disembark a passenger immediately upon violating a voice-call prohibition.

Preferably while in mid-air.

But all life is sacred, right ???

Now disembarking their CELL PHONE in mid-air would require a much smaller airlock to prevent the cabin from depressurizing, and would ensure that a first offense (on a particular flight by a particular passenger) likely would be the LAST offense on that flight by that passenger. [If we made it that ALL that passenger's phones were disembarked, it WOULD be the last offense.]

On a more serious note, we don't need this type of law. All we need is for airlines to have a clearly s

We should ban talking altogether. Terrorists have been known to use speech in training as well as in the execution of terrorist attacks. Child pornographers and drug cartels are also frequent users of speech.

Are they going to ban them in restaurants next? Movie theaters? What an idiotic premise!

In a restaurant, I can ask my waitress to tell you to STFU. If she fails to, I can (and will) walk out.

You already can't use your phone in a movie theater.

Being stuck on a plane for several hours while some sales wanker is on a conference call -- well, let's just say the cabin crew might have to break up a few fights and deal with the fallout of someone who has had enough. After you've won buzz-word bingo for the 3rd time in 15 minutes, it wears thin, and people have already been stressed out by the process of going through the airport.

Mark my words, I bet it would take less than 2 years before the first in-flight murder of a cell phone user or something silly like that. Because the people who feel they can't avoid using their cell phones often have absolutely no awareness of those around them, because they feel whatever they're doing is so important that the rest of us should have to put up with it.

There is a train line that came up with a novel idea: on part of the train you can use your cellphone, and on part of the train you can't! Gee, what a concept. Maybe we could let the airlines figure this out, rather than having Congress make laws.

There is a train line that came up with a novel idea: on part of the train you can use your cellphone, and on part of the train you can't! Gee, what a concept. Maybe we could let the airlines figure this out, rather than having Congress make laws.

Amtrack does not charge extra for "quiet cars". You can bet your ass an airplane would charge you for some peace and quiet.

Also, on a train you can get up, move around, and there is lots of room between seats. On a plane you are pressed right up against the asshole yammering on his phone right next to you.

Actually they should charge for the right to use the cell phone, and have a cell phone reserved area.

Only people that really need to make calls will pay. Maybe that's the way congress should legislate, the fundamental right is the right to quietness, but give the airlines leeway to charge for customers who insist in making phone calls in flight.

A long time ago there were smoker and non smoker areas, so dividing a plane into two areas is not a problem.

Here is a thought. An aeroplane is a public place, and you should not necessarily expect quiet on a plane. What next, do you ban people talking to each other on planes because is disturbs your peace and quiet?

Why not buy some earplugs if you want to drown out the noise around you? Why not let people use their time as productively as they wish.

If it is a red eye flight, then I fully agree that people should be quiet at certain times. but to mandate it for all flights, whatever the time is ridiculous.

Sure, and the trumpet player who's travelling to his next performance should be allowed to make productive use of his time by practicing. It's not like you have a right to peace and quiet at the expense of his convenience.

You're still missing the point. (God I hate airplanes so freakin much)

An airplane is NOT a public space.

It's a pressurized little container where people are jammed packed like little fucking sardines. The average seat size has been reduced due to greed, while the average ass size has only gone up.

So it's greatly uncomfortable as it is. Let's add to it ridiculously uncomfortable seats, and the fact they can recline annihilating the space for the passenger behind you. Your option? Recline your seat as well to reclaim the space. Last row that can't recline. You're fucked dude.

You got problems with poor circulation and neuropathy? Ehhh, fuck you and stay sitting period. You can't even get up to stretch your legs unless it's the weak pretense of going to bathroom, and there are only two of those SOB's on most flights.

Then there is biggest restraint. It's a pressurized fucking container moving 500+ mph through the sky and you can't leave .

It's not a public space by any stretch of the imagination. It's an agreed upon temporary prison not designed for comfort at all with the sole purpose of ferrying your ass as fast as possible between two points.

So let's be pragmatic in the approach and not so high and mighty about who gets to do what and how freedom shall not be tarnished and the wings of liberty can't lose a feather.

Can I leave that environment at any time when some asshat like you thinks I should just spend my money for sensory deprivation equipment because you want to dominate the space with your loud incessant talking on the phone? You might want to think that through for a sec....

Cuz... I will fucking kill you. They will pull you off that plane with peanuts jammed up your nose, and that life raft/vest/fart-catcher sticking out your ass. Ohh, and I will be wearing your fucking ears around my neck as a sign of my kill.

I'm not trapped on that plane with you, you're trapped on that plane with me. I'm uncomfortable. I'm pissed off that the TSA didn't lube up on that pseudo random investigations they do for security theater. I'm possibly a little dehydrated cuz I didn't want to spend 10$ for a bottle of water and $3m USD for that turkey panini to raise my blood sugar up. It's not just me either. Keep that in mind.

You're general audience is pissed off (at least to some extent), frustrated, uncomfortable, hungry, dehydrated, dealing with snotty children and babies, and CAPTIVE. Good luck if you want to be the asshole and become the center of attention.

P.S - Having a conversation with another travelling passenger at a reasonable volume is just fine. You should just be civilized and keep in mind that nobody has the choice but to put up with you, and they have no where to go.

Because the people who feel they can't avoid using their cell phones often have absolutely no awareness of those around them, because they feel whatever they're doing is so important that the rest of us should have to put up with it.

This. I know someone that operates a hotel (and sometimes I used to help at the front desk). Often heavy smokers (and you can smell them as they walk up to the desk) specifically request a non-smoker room because they don't have to smell smoke. More often than not, they seem to end up lighting-up in that room because they just couldn't resist and they get indignant when the hotel attempts to fine them for smoking in a non-smoker room. The most common excuse was it was cold and didn't want to get dressed to go outside and I couldn't wait (as if that is somehow a valid excuse).

People addicted to telephones, texting and internet games would seem to fit this profile better than they would probably want to admit.

I was in an older hotel once and a couple across the border from Mexico would not stop smoking in the non-smoking room next to me. The smoke would come under the door and across through the ventilation.

Complained at least 9 times till they moved me to a bigger suite across the hotel... since they could not get this guy to stop smoking. I knew he was Mexican and across the border (they come over to spend money in the large outlet malls) since he would scream every time they knocked on th

does the legislation have an provision for providing in-flight calls from more expensive seats?

because fuck, if you just swiped a credit card then inflight calls were available from most "normal",non-budget airline, flights for about two decades now..

and if that provision is there we know exactly who is lobbying for it. an airline could easily ban phone calls on it's flights if it wants now though, but it's a competitive disadvantage if it's not forced on all.

Replace "talkers" with "crying babies" and your statement is no less true. Shall we ban babies on flights as well?

Yes, please!!

I once had a screamer behind me on an early flight, and I was not feeling that well.

I rang the flight attendent, and when she came to me, I asked her if we could "please put the kid in the overhead compartment".

It was just loud enough for the parent behind to hear, who *finally* started to try to control the kid....and the flight attendant smiled at me and said "I think you need a bloody mary", and went to get me one.

If you can't or won't control your kids, please keep them at home until they can maintain themselves in public.

I actually miss smoking sections in restaurants for this reason, it was much better to eat there as that most parents wouldn't eat in the smoking section. And when I worked in the business back while in school, I found the smoking section folks drank more alcohol and tipped better too, but that's another topic altogether.

I actually miss smoking sections in restaurants for this reason, it was much better to eat there as that most parents wouldn't eat in the smoking section. And when I worked in the business back while in school, I found the smoking section folks drank more alcohol and tipped better too, but that's another topic altogether.

Here's my tips to finding good restaurants to eat at in places with a smoking ban.

#1 - Preference restaurants with bars and sit in/at the bar. This one is the big one since children are not allowed in the bar and many restaurants that feature a bar area are also sufficiently separated from the general dining area so that even if the restaurant would match a later criteria it's still a good choice.#2 - Avoid restaurants with a children's menu or have a quantity of items priced under $10. The lack of low pric

If you can't or won't control your kids, please keep them at home until they can maintain themselves in public.

There is another side to that story. I've been a business traveler for a lot of years, earning Platinum status with Skyteam year after year. I was always annoyed by parents traveling with kids... Until I became a father myself. Unfortunately, it is not always an option to "just keep them home". Family living abroad, a death in the family, there are many reasons why infants and toddlers need to travel.

Having that said, your frustration should be aimed at the parents who are unprepared. When my (now 2 year old) daughter travels, 90% of our carry-on is toys and food to keep her silent. And usually there are two 10-minute moments that every kid cries: take-off and landing, for obvious reasons. And even the landing noise can be mitigated by feeding the child, especially if it is still an infant. However, I have seen parents doing nothing when their kid screams so loud that the vibration becomes a hazard for the engines. That, my friend, is the person you should vent your frustration at. These parents should be banned from airplanes, and parenthood altogether. The kid is not the nightmare, the parent is.

On her latest trip, last week from AMS to SFO, my wife was actually complimented about our daughter's behavior by passengers around them. The trick? A fully charged Ipad Mini fully loaded with Dora the Explorer movies.

Planes are not the same thing, can you get up and walk out of a plane if the staff can not or will not deal with unruly passengers. on a flight you are imprisoned with everyone else and yes we need regulations to force us to act civilly to each other. It has become quite obvious that in America people have decided that they can and will be assholes to any and everyone if they can get away with it.

And that's different from talking with the person next to you how, exactly? If people can't respect basic social manners, they won't respect them regardless of how. If it's not a phone it'll be something else. This is why we have personnel on board the airplanes.

People do tend to be less considerate of bystanders when making phone calls than when talking to someone who is actually in the room in my experience; you'll see someone who's having a perfectly reasonable conversation with somebody at dinner, then turn away to answer their phone and jump up an order of magnitude in loudness. I think it's the fact that one side of the conversation is private to the other people in the room; it triggers some sort of general "private talk" flag in the brain that makes you automatically and quite unconsciously begin talking as though there was nobody else there.

While I agree that a law against phone calls on planes is stupid, I wouldn't lump the Do Not Call list into that. With phone calls on planes, consumers have a choice. You can not fly on or complain to airlines that permit this. If they get enough complaints/lost revenue, they'll ban it without the need for legislation.

With the Do Not Call list, though, there were companies calling people to solicit them. These people didn't have the option of just not getting these calls. You could demand to be taken o

Also, I have always left my phone on in flights. It doesn't get a signal at altitude, and definitely not over the middle of the ocean.

Most airlines have or are adding Internet service to their planes, and some are contemplating using it to provide a cellular microcell (acts like a tower and connects to your cellular provider over Internet). I think the plans right now are to set it up as a third party cell and you'd get charged roaming rates on it if you used it. But it's not difficult to conceive a future where the roaming rates have been scaled back to a few cents/min or eliminated altogether from the cellular carriers competing (hah!) and deciding to just pay the airlines to provide their service.

I've seen plenty of phones on planes before, but I've never seen them used to actually make calls. Probably because they cost a shitload.

So, just have a fair warning to consumers, that each call will cost $10 a minute (via various methods, including text messages to those phones that are turned on). Then, only those people who actually have a pressing need will use the phones in flight. Solves the problem for me.

Moreover, if noise worries you, then get a pair of earplugs. And/or don't fly (the engines are almost always the noisiest thing on airplanes for me).

I don't understand why so many people suggest getting earplugs. I've tried your suggestion, and it doesn't work. Earplugs do not cancel out all noise. You would still be able to hear someone next to you on their phone. And if you were able to cancel out all the noise, then what you would hear is the sound of your own breathing and possibly your heartbeat. This will actually drive you crazy after a while.

I think a better solution is that once you've achieved cruising altitude that passenger can petition for a vote of all passengers to have specific annoying passengers literally thrown off the planes. No parachute, just a good heave. As annoying cell phone users are - shouting in their phones, etc. - seat kickers, loud drunks, crying babies and others deserve some sort of retribution too.

If the person next to you is talking on the phone just join in. Comment on what they say, ask what the other person said, etc. Someone rude enough to have a phone conversation in a crowd won't catch the sarcasm, but at least you'll annoy them as much as they annoy you.

A friend of mine who lives in NYC told me about a time he was riding a bus (may have been driving it...he worked as a bus driver for a long time) and this woman was talking in detail about her visit to the gynecologist and all the odd discharges she was having...

An old dude on the other side of the bus yells out "DAMN WOMAN, NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS WITH YOUR STANK PUSSY!" and everyone applauded. XD

I commute to and from New York City on a train every day. I've seen fights almost break out from rude people yapping on phones. Allowing phone calls on planes is a very bad idea. Nobody wants to listen to other people yap on a phone during a three hour flight.

People get agitated enough being cramped into small seats with no leg room. Lets just add to the agitation my making the person next to you annoy the hell out of you by yapping on the phone to their friend.

Is this even feasible? with most flights you're 5-7 miles above the ground. IIRC, cell phone signals radiate mostly parallel to the ground. Can you even get a cell signal in a plane? I don't fly much, and the times I've had I never turned my cellular radio on in my phone.

Acutally you can sometimes get a cell signal from a phone on a plane (some lightly used rural towers can pretty high power/range). Unfortunatly the high-altitude and velocity of a plane used to confuse cell networks (esp., the tower-handoff protocols between say a 3G and a CDMA tower on a multi-mode phone) and consume too much of the tower's antenna power-bandwidth envelope leaving less for other calls. Because so many folks leave their cell-phones onboard planes, nowdays many networks are configured dete

How about we respect the fact that the plane is the property of the airline and let them set policy accordingly. I mean holy crap on a cracker Batman, civility will break down because someone is talking (at most likely) conversational volume on a cell phone on a long flight that already has cranky and cramped adults, babies and drunks.

Both Alexander and Feinstein have issues that they'd rather the media not look at right now. Alexander's chief of staff was just arrested on child porn charges, and Feinstein...I don't think I have to mention, here on/., why people hate Feinstein.

So they've come together with a "you know that thing that people really hate? Let's ban it!" bill meant to get their names in the headlines next to something they think people will like. It's just a stunt. Pay no heed to it.

I can't overexaggerate how much I love the zone of silence in my daily bus and train rides, or the pristine calm of the city sidewalks.

Give me a fucking break. Suddenly the Senate is concerned for my delicate ears? More likely: an airline was cutting a deal with a carrier to sell AirTalk (tm) in-flight voice at $3.99 a minute and doesn't want to be undercut.

I have personally witnessed Diane Feistein bumping off a confirmed passenger (an associate who had booked a seat near me), and refusing to turn off her electronic equipment (A Kindle) during landing operations on a commercial flight (when it was prohibited to leave it on during takeoffs and landings). Who the F**k is this person to make this kind of policy when she can't think of anyone but herself when it comes to behavior on an airplane?

Could you please pass a law to create a new felony for crying on a plane. All there uneducated babies are really, but really annoying me when I am trying to browse porn sites while in the middle of a transcontinental flight.

Maybe the best compromise would be to have phone booths, where you can go in and make your call? Anywhere else in the plane there would be no signal. Now how to make it so people share the space respectively?

What's difference between talking on a phone and talking to someone I am traveling with as far as noise disruption?

Because of low (or absent) sidetone on cell phones, people tend to speak much more loudly than they would in a regular conversation. Additionally, if the connection is poor people tend to shout. This is why most people find cell conversations disruptive.

I don't agree with the bill, but there is a difference to the third-parties.

Firstly, everyone talks louder on the phone. They don't realize it and deny it left-and-right, but they do. Add to that, they will be compensating for the engine noise so it's going to be a lot of "can you hear me, what about now, is that better" So you have increased volume.

Second, you have the issue of "half a conversation" messing with your brain. Hearing another conversation isn't so bad, hearing only HALF the conversation (the guy on the phone) and your brain tries to piece together w t h they're talking about or what the person on the other-end-of-the-phone is saying. It's an automatic thing, so it adds to the annoyance.

Lastly, not too many people talk to their strangers / neighbors for more than a few minutes. Sure people talk, but for the most part people just want to veg out and rest / read / watch the movie / etc. Bring in the phones, and LOTS of people will be talking.

Personally I'm fine with the way planes have been... the talking is at a minimum so I can at least try to get some rest. Instead now you will have people going on and on about mundane stuff.

At least... hopefully the teens and younger will be Texting instead of calling... so I don't have to hear all of the "Oh My Gawd did you see what she was wearing" BS.